The Consequence He Must Claim

And if she failed, he could turn out like her father, falling in love elsewhere.

“What are you really afraid of?” he asked in stern challenge. “Because I’ve never known you to be a coward. In fact, if anyone else was in this situation—if I was in this situation with another woman,” he said, coming across to her again, words coming out faster and hotter, “you would tell me to marry the mother of my child.”

She scowled. “And you would tell me there were more factors to consider and I should mind my own business.”

“In this case I’m telling you you’re right. Enjoy it,” he snapped back.

“Look, my father didn’t love his wife—”

He cut her off impatiently. “Loveless marriages can work. My parents are an excellent example.”

“Ha!” It escaped her before she could hold it back.

His brows shot up.

“Do you honestly think they’re happy?” she asked.

“I don’t think they’re unhappy. They each receive what they want from the union    . In our case, you’ll have a father for your child. Tell me that’s not important to you. Tell me you don’t wish your father had lived and stayed with your family.”

That was hitting below the belt! Of course she did. She’d loved her father the way any daughter did. Losing him had been devastating. She’d been eleven, that painful age of beginning to develop and already not feeling like herself in her own body, moody and overwhelmed.

She’d also been old enough to understand what it meant that her father had two families and intelligent enough to grasp the full scope of disgrace as they were given a multitude of looks from former friends and neighbors, looks that varied from pitying to smug.

With her father in residence, he’d offered them protection from judgment. They’d lived their life as if they were his legitimate family. Without him, they were pretenders. Her mother’s family, already having disowned her over the scandal of her living with a man out of wedlock, had refused to help. The entire village had distanced themselves.

Sorcha had gone as hungry as her sisters that first year, while her mother sold her jewelry and begged for any job she could get. Sorcha hadn’t questioned or complained about any of it. She had comprehended all too clearly why they were living in one room and her mother was working in a hospital laundry and cried all the time.

She didn’t plan to ever wind up in circumstances that dire, but that’s where “love” could land you, she reminded herself. Her father’s other children hadn’t suffered like that. They were probably quite content, no matter how their parents had felt about each other, so why was she hesitating to give Enrique that same material security just because Cesar didn’t love her?

“What would you get from the union    ?” she asked warily.

“Besides my son?” he asked facetiously. “A wife who excites me sexually.” His brows went up when she gasped. “Why does that surprise you? I slept with you that day because I’d been attracted to you from the first time we met. That much I know without question. You know what else I know?”

She caught her breath, shaking her head, scenting danger as he came around to the open side of her bed.

“You wouldn’t have let anything happen between us if you hadn’t been suppressing the same attraction. You know what I keep thinking? You were quitting because you were jealous of Diega. Sexually. You knew that once I married, you and I would never sleep together. I knew that. It was bothering me. I wasn’t ready to get engaged because I had promised you to myself before I went off the market.”

“Do you hear how arrogant you are?” she managed to reply, heart stumbling. “You were planning to make me your last hurrah? That’s incredibly insulting.”

He ran his gaze over her in a way that drew the blanket down, exposing her to his roving eye. “I’ve always expected we’d be very compatible. How was it?”

“Are you serious?” She burned alive as he shoved her back into that sensual fire with a look. “Ask Diega. She seems to have all the details on what we did that day.”

“The things I let you say to me,” he muttered, touching her chin to force her to look up into his eyes.

All the emotions she used to be able to disguise in a blink flooded behind her eyes with hard pressure. She couldn’t breathe.

“Of all the memories I’ve lost, the most maddening is not remembering what it’s like to make love to you. I cannot wait for our do-over.” He bent and covered her lips with his own, hard, but not hurtfully. He seemed to catch himself at the last second and decide whether he wanted to plunder or merely sample.